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Cloud Commons Canada · a non-profit

Understand your apps. Take control of their permissions.

We're building LEON, a free guide that shows what's known about the apps you use and helps you make informed choices about their settings.

Try the LEON demo → Check your browser

Built by a Canadian non-profit. No advertising. No data sales.

LEON’s personal progress screen: a colourful maple leaf in a deep green clearing, Leon and one setting to try.
The LEON demo · example data

Try it now

What does this page already know about you?

Every website learns a few things about you before you click anything. Press the button to see what your browser just told this one. It stays on your screen: nothing is sent or saved.

How LEON works

Meet LEON, a data guide for the phone in your hand.

LEON is a free pilot that shows what's known about the apps you pick, and what you can change.

  1. 01You pick your apps

    A few from your day. LEON doesn't scan your phone.

  2. 02You decide what stays

    Keep it, check what it can reach, or let it go.

  3. 03One setting at a time

    LEON asks the plain question and shows you where to change it.

Try the demo → Join the pilot

Why trust us

What LEON will never do, and what we promise.

  • No readingLEON doesn't read your messages or see what you do in apps. When we check an app's network connections, we do it on our own test phones, or on yours only if you choose.
  • Opt-in, alwaysSharing is off unless you turn it on, and you see exactly what would be sent first. The pilot sends nothing yet.
  • Open resultsThe map will be published for researchers, journalists and policymakers. No paywall.
  • Locked to the publicCloud Commons Canada is a non-profit, and its articles keep its assets out of private hands if it ever closes. No advertising and no data sales are our commitments today; the by-law that will bind them is drafted, not yet adopted.
Join the pilot → Read our governance
  1. Woodcut illustration: a tracker kneels over pawprints on a misty forest path.

    Why this matters · a short history of being watched

    We were all trackers once.

    We followed animals, read weather and studied footprints. A trail was a message left in the open, readable to anyone who knew how to look.

  2. Woodcut illustration: hands fasten a tracking collar on a sleeping wolf.

    Then we put a collar on the animal.

    The tracker no longer had to read the ground. The collar did the noticing.

  3. Woodcut illustration: a figure on a ridge holds up a radio antenna over a valley of deer.

    Radio let the signal do the walking.

    The tracker stayed on the ridge. The animal never knew anyone was listening.

  4. Woodcut illustration: rows of office terminals under a giant watching eye.

    The office learned the trick next.

    Keystrokes, hours and output, measured by systems the workers could not see.

  5. Woodcut illustration: a crowd of faces lit by screens full of hearts and likes.

    The feed learned it best.

    Every glance, pause and like became a signal about what would hold us a little longer.

  1. 01:10 AM · your trail today

    Now the collar fits in your pocket.

    Our phones shed evidence of where we go, what we search, what we buy, how we work and who we know.

  2. Every app you install brings company.

    Advertising, analytics and data-broker code rides along inside the apps you chose.

  3. Most of those companies answer to laws written outside Canada.

  4. They can read your trail. You can't.

    Most of that record is unreadable to the people making it. We think that should change.

What we are building

It starts at the kitchen table, with three decisions.

  1. Whether to look.
  2. Whether to share.
  3. Who gets to decide.

Cloud Commons Canada is a non-profit building a public tool for each one, starting with the first: LEON.

Privacy asks the systems to look away. Sovereignty asks who holds the map in the first place.

  1. Decision two · Share

    One phone shows you your own trail.

  2. Thousands of phones show Canada the whole map.

    Who owns our digital infrastructure, where it runs, whose law applies. To be published openly, with no paywall.

  3. This time, the people who make the trail hold the map.

Decision three · Decide

Who gets to use the map, and who can say no?

A commons only works when its rules are public and its limits are real. Ours are written down, and we show which are in force and which are still drafts.

Collage: scattered bills, schedules and a cracked phone feed into one shared map, which a group studies together at a long table.
Private trails, public patternPublic record
01GovernanceWho runs this, and the rules that bind us. 02Join the LEON pilotA confirmation now, and an invitation when the pilot opens to you. 03Policy briefThe policy case, for people who write the rules. 04The CommonsEssays on data, identity and public infrastructure. 05Partner with usHelp shape the rules, or build tools under them.

They read your trail every day. Start reading it yourself.

Join the LEON pilot →